SOURCE: "The Torment of D. W. Griffith," in The American Scholar, Vol. 59, Spring, 1990, pp. 255-64.

In the following essay, Lynn recounts the production history of Broken Blossoms and other films, focusing on Griffith's relationship with actor Lillian Gish.

The first masterpiece by an American director to emerge from the post-World War I search for a new art of film was D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms, which had its premiere in New York in May 1919. Filmed in constricted studio settings under artificial lights, rather than in the open expanses of California fields in which Griffith had mounted so many of the scenes in The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Hearts of the World, the picture was characterized by attention to atmosphere, involuted acting styles, and innovative photography. Yet if Broken Blossoms was an exquisite piece of work, it was also excruciating, reaching levels of emotional intensity that were...